Origin

Disclaimer: I do not own Smallville and I make no money from this fanfiction.

This fic is written on the request of davros fan (who wrote the outline for this fic) and is set in an alternate universe that they made up (it should be pretty apparent from the story what's different).

Jimmy woke to the sound of a slamming door. He bolted up, breathing heavily, disorientated despite the fact he was in his own bed, in his own house. He stared up at the ceiling, his eyes tracing the familiar lines of the patches of damp, finding it strangely calming. The house was silent but for a few residual creaks; he relaxed a little, knowing his mother must be out.

He rolled over so he could reach the nightstand, grabbing his phone. He flipped it open, checking his messages, hoping that he might find something there. Nothing.

It wasn't that he wasn't usually inundated with messages; Van was pretty much the only one with his number. No, it was that Van still hadn't texted back and it had been far too long.

He got it, Van's dad was dead- it was only natural that he'd fall off the radar for a while but it had been weeks with no contact. He'd tried to give him space but now he was getting worried, it couldn't be healthy for him to shut himself off like that, not even talking to his best friend. He'd been thinking about it for a couple of days but now he was resolved; he'd go and visit Van up at his cabin- try and get him to open up a bit or to take his mind off it (whichever worked). He told himself that this had nothing to do with the fact that he missed Van; it wasn't about his feelings, his motives were purely related to his friend's well-being.

He did miss him though.

He knocked once on the door, only waiting a second before he just plain barged in. Van looked up, his eyes bloodshot and filled with anger. There was a veil of sweat covering Van's bare chest, he'd probably been working out earlier but he was sat perfectly still now. Van had always used exercise to exorcise his rage but Jimmy could tell just by looking at him that it hadn't worked this time.

Van stared for a moment, disorientated, as if he had never seen Jimmy before in his life. He was surrounded by newspapers on all sides, almost completely covering the floor.

"Hey, it's just me," Jimmy said, giving his friend a nervous little smile.

"Jimmy…" Van's voice sounded far fainter and more strained than usual. "What are you doing here?"

Jimmy picked up one of the papers, just to give himself something to do so he could avoid looking Van in the eye. It was the edition that reported Van's father's death- of course. All the newspapers were different but they all told the same story.

"I'm here because I wanted to see how you are." He shrugged as though it were no big deal, as if Van were sick with the flu or something- he always tried to downplay the bad stuff, or make a joke out of it, it just seemed to make things easier.

"Well, you've seen now, can you please just go?" Van's hands were shaking, impatiently, and Jimmy could feel the rage emanating from him in waves- not really for him specifically, at least he didn't think so, but towards a world in which such evil could happen. His anger was unfocused, aimless- Tina was dead and there was nothing that Van could do about it, no-one else he could blame- it was just the way of the world.

It was then that Jimmy had an idea.

He sat down in front of Van, shaking his head. "No, I'm not leaving. I'm here to help you, man."

"How can you possibly help?" Van crumpled one of the newspapers in his fist.

"You know what the problem with this town is?" Jimmy asked, aware that he was walking a dangerous line with this- but he'd do anything to get Van out of this meaningless angst. He needed a target and Jimmy was going to give him one. "The meteor freaks. Tina may be dead but they still rule this town and it's not going to stop…"

Van looked at him, his eyes narrowing in some kind of understanding.

"Unless someone stops them. You and me, we can go after them, together." He grasped Van's hand tight, looking straight into his eyes. He felt the shiver of danger go down his spine as he spoke those words. It wasn't that there wasn't truth to them, he believed what he was saying, but he still couldn't help but feel that it was like standing on the edge of a cliff, trying to pull Van up, like he could just as easily end up tumbling to his death along with him.

So he was a meteor freak himself- but he wasn't really one of them. He'd never used his powers to deliberately hurt anyone (even when he'd wanted to)- surely the fact that he had never so much as considered stalking Lana Lang alone made him different from all the rest.

"You're right," Van said, a slight note of force returning to his voice. "It's what my father would have wanted."

Jimmy didn't really know if that was true (he'd only met the man a couple of times) but he found himself nodding regardless.

"They'll pay for what they did to him." Shivers ran up Jimmy's spine at Van's words; this was what he wanted but Van's anger still scared him- but it was better than the alternative. Van might of being doing this for his father but Jimmy was doing this for Van. "But where do we start?"

"I know how we can find them- Chloe Sullivan, the girl who runs the Torch, has a database of potential freaks she thinks no-one else knows about." Jimmy knew his own name wasn't on there- he'd checked before and there was no sign of it anywhere, just more proof he wasn't really like the others if little miss investigative reporter hadn't identified him as one of them.

Van grasped Jimmy's shoulders and fixed him with an intense look. "Thank you."

Without even thinking about it, Jimmy found himself leaning forward to catch Van's mouth in a kiss. He'd thought about it before, spun wild fantasies where they'd be together in that way, but he'd honestly never intended to act on it. He felt Van relax into the kiss, kissing him back with force.

Then- Van pushed him away, his face crumpled up in confusion and what Jimmy hoped wasn't disgust. He stood up and turned away from Jimmy.

"I think you should go."

Jimmy didn't want to go, more than anything he wanted to stay- no, what he really wanted was to get in a time machine and go back to five minutes ago before this had ever happened.

He fled like a coward.

Later that day he felt his cell phone vibrate. He watched it for a moment, not even looking at the screen- he knew who it would be. Should he pick up? Ever since they had kissed and Van had rejected him there had been this pit in his stomach that, no matter what he did, just wouldn't go away. The phone continued to vibrate. Not being able to take it anymore, he grabbed it and answered it.

"Van?" he answered, anxiety filtering into his voice. "Listen about earlier…I'm sorry, man, I didn't mean to…"

He trailed off, unsure as to what he should say.

"I'm not calling to talk about that," Van said, shortly. "I wanted to know whether you could send me the list that you got from Sullivan's computer."

Jimmy was startled for a second before he remembered that that was indeed what they had been talking about before hand. "Er, yeah…sure…but listen, I am really sorry about you know…"

"Forget it," Van said, his voice still sounding a little tense. "It's not important."

"Really?" Jimmy allowed hope to filter into his voice. "Then we're still in this together?"

Van went silent for a minute and Jimmy hoped he hadn't pushed his luck.

"Yes, we're in it together."

That's it for this fic; I hope it was okay, I wouldn't have picked to write these particular characters had I not been requested to so I hope my versions came out alright. Please review; I love any feedback.